Henry Mancini and the Pink Panther Sneak into Record Store Day

By Jon Sobel, BLOGCRITICS.ORG

Published 10:00 pm, Friday, April 18, 2014

Record Store Day is upon us, and coincidentally, so is the late Henry Mancini's 90th birthday (April 16, 2014). It's also the 50th anniversary of the famous soundtrack, The Pink Panther - Music from the Film Score Composed and Conducted by Henry Mancini. Proving that Record Store Day isn't only for hipster indie bands that would probably be putting out their new albums on vinyl anyway, Sony/Legacy is releasing for the occasion a 50th Anniversary Limited Edition of Mancini's classic iconic-hipster soundtrack on 12? pink vinyl.

A new official Henry Mancini website launched on April 16, 2014, and this year will see lots of activity posted there from Legacy's year-long celebration. The four-Oscar, 20-Grammy winner scored more than 190 movies, ranging from Abbott & Costello Go to Mars, Creature from the Black Lagoon and Mommie Dearest to The Glenn Miller Story, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue and Frenzy. This year Mancini will get his own 11-CD box set with the best of his classic soundtracks.

Also planned is a retrospective tribute collection with new and catalog recordings of the composer's songs. Those include, besides the "Pink Panther Theme," "Moon River" (from Breakfast at Tiffany's), the Oscar-winning "Days of Wine and Roses" from the movie of the same name, the Charlie's Angels theme, and that fetish of beginning bass players everywhere, the "Peter Gunn" bass line.

Meanwhile, stop by your local Record Store Day participant on the big day (Saturday April 19), where, if you're of a mind, you can pick up the pink vinyl Pink Panther. In his own day Mancini recorded more than 90 albums, including eight that went gold - but none, as far as I know, literally pink. Now you can have it all.